The Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Francis Crick (1916–2004) – co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule – wrote that ‘you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’.With all due respect, if that is the case, then it is also true of Crick’s sorrows, memories, ambitions, identity – and his belief that these things are ‘no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’. If my memories are ‘no more’ than molecules, and Crick’s belief that this is true is also ‘no more’ than molecules, then why are his molecules ‘more true’ than mine? Molecules are molecules, just as sand is sand and drift is drift. The philosophers and scientists who make these kind of sweeping statements seem unaware that they undermine any possibility of their being true – which is the only reason we should give them a moment’s thought.
From The Caretakers of the Cosmos: Living Responsibly in an Unfinished World
Lachman in his first chapter of this book does a wonderful takedown of the intellectually chic idea that humans are no more important to the universe than a slime mold, as John Gray asserts. In the end it comes down to what motivates you to want to believe that, which leads to a complacent, do-nothing nihilism or to believe on the contrary, as Lachman argues, that humans have a responsibility for directing evolution.
The problem with the Crick or Gray or what passes for the intellectual left is that behind their presentation of themselves as people who have the courage to face the truth of the fundamental meaninglessness of existence lies what might be described as a Luciferic arrogance that cleverly manipulates partial truths into idols of the mind.
As I've argued here over the years, whoever comes up with the best story wins, and the Crick/Gray story is by definition a loser because it allows the bad guys to win by default. The challenge, of course, is to develop an alternative narrative that makes sense given what we know about the cosmos but which opens up possibilities for a richer, deeper human future than closes them off, as the Crick/Gray narrative does.
For me it is rooted in the unpacking the implications of the prologue to the Gospel of St. John, and for that I have found the German Idealists as an important resource. Everything changes once you accept that Mind is primary rather than matter, and there's no reason to believe that matter is primary because it's an arbitrary premise that leads to a nihilistic dead end that nobody with a shred of soul life really believes is true, and should not believe is. Nevertheless, there is not yet plausible, broadly believable counter narrative that makes a cogent case that Mind is primary.
Lachman is all read in on German and continental philosophy, but is more interested in drawing on the Hermetic Tradition that was so influential in shaping Renaissance thinking--Ficino and Pico, in particular. Ficino's Christian Neoplatonism is something I've always had a soft spot for, but I don't know if that tradition provides resources to provide a counter-narrative. I doubt it. It's one thing for Madonna to be a Cabbalist; it's another for the kind of person who writes for the New York Review of Books or The Atlantic. But one way or the other there has to be a shift in the imaginary of intellectuals that embraces the idea that Mind is primary, a Mind that takes seriously the validity of experiences that transcend what is given only through the senses.